Adam pointed back along the street. “The car came from that direction. I reread the coroner’s report and the crash report. They agreed that the injuries were consistent with being struck by a car that was travelling at sixty miles per hour or more. It’s easy to find out on Google that sixty is a fatal speed.”
Patricia pulled out her phone. Within a few seconds she was turning the phone to show Isobel a graph. A quick glance at the graph made it clear that very few people of any age survived being hit by a car travelling at sixty miles per hour.
Isobel nodded sadly.
Adam said, “If you feel up to it, I just want to get some idea of where the car would have started its acceleration from.”
Patricia nodded.
Isobel shivered. It was strange. Despite the fact that Thomas had died here a long time ago she felt a connection to him.
Adam pulled out his own phone. “I checked the type of car involved in the incident. It was a Ford Focus 1993 model. I’ve checked some car tables and if the driver was doing sixty miles per hour when he hit Thomas . . .” Adam pulled up some information on his phone. “It would have taken him maybe ten seconds to accelerate from standstill to that speed.”
Isobel could feel her mind glazing over. She glanced at Patricia who was frowning in concentration.
“That means that the driver travelled about one eight of a mile from starting to impact.”
Patricia swung around and looked back towards the pub. “So where would the car have started its acceleration from?”
Adam frowned. “How many steps do you think you take to walk a mile?”
Isobel smiled. “I know this. I monitored this when I was si –” She swallowed. “While I’ve been on sabbatical. A mile for me is 2000 steps.”
Adam did some more computing. “So we are roughly talking about 250 steps.” Adam looked up. “That seems a lot. Walk back that far, Isobel, to see where you would be accelerating the car from.”
Isobel set off walking. She counted out the steps, then stopped and turned. From where she stood she could see Adam and Patricia, but she couldn’t see their faces. At closing time at night it would be impossible to accurately identify anyone from this distance.
“It’s too far!” she shouted. She wasn’t sure if they heard her.
Adam beckoned to her to come back.
Isobel walked back. “It’s too far, isn’t it?” she said.
Adam nodded.
Patricia pivoted on her feet. “If Matt waited outside, hidden, when he saw Thomas coming out he could run back to the car, jump in and then accelerate after him.”
Adam made a face.
“You don’t think so?” Isobel said.
“I think you’re making theories based on who you want to be guilty.”
Isobel commented, “When we get to the police station we need to have a look at that footage.”
They travelled in Adam’s car to Scotland Yard for the midday meeting. They were a bit early so Adam spoke to Stella and the attractive athletic-looking young officer showed them to a side office where she left them to use the computer. They plugged in the USB stick and ran the footage.
Looking at it, all three of them could see that Mrs O’Dwyer was not faulty in her memory of the events. The man didn’t appear very drunk or stoned or very shocked and distressed.
Adam said, “When the driver stands out of the car he does seem tall. From his shoulders I would guess definitely a man too but he has done well to keep the peak of his hat down and his head lowered.”
Patricia said, “If this was Matt, he would know about the cameras outside the pub on the street. He would know that he needed to be careful.”
Isobel nodded, “And Matt would know that the street was suitable for building speed.”
Adam said, “Yes, but so would any of the joyriders from the area.”
They looked at each other.
“Let’s see if this secretary who owned the car knew Matt Cooper,” said Patricia.
Chapter 38
Isobel, Patricia and Adam stood at the back of the conference room. The atmosphere was contagious, almost physical, like a tingle or a buzz. Something was happening.
Isobel saw Malcolm and he gave her the thumbs-up.
What? Did he mean they’d found the body? She had no time to find out anything more before Simon called the meeting to order.
“OK, people, settle down. First things first, I’m going to hand you over to Pat who is our Marine Policing Unit expert.”
Pat moved to the front and centre of the room. “We recommenced our search at first light today and searched in the area that our Thames expert suggested but we found nothing.”
Isobel’s heart sank.
There were murmurs and a general shifting around as people expressed their disappointment.
“Then we tracked along the riverbed from that point towards the dump site and . . .” He paused.
Isobel could feel a ray of hope igniting inside her.
“And an hour ago we found a bag snagged on a protuberance on the bed of the river. The bag appeared to resemble the one videoed entering the water. The bag was moved to our examination area and a preliminary exam confirms that the bag contains . . .” He paused again, looked around the expectant faces and found Isobel’s. “The bag contains the body of a woman.”
A subdued rustle could be heard. No one wanted to celebrate a dead woman’s body but everyone was hugely relieved that her remains had been recovered.
Isobel felt tears starting to her eyes and hastily tried to brush them away. Simon caught her eye and gave an acknowledging nod.
“The coroner is with the body now and we hope the autopsy will be done today,” Pat finished.
“Well done, mate, to you and your crew!” shouted an anonymous voice and there was some backslapping.
Simon stepped forward now. “Thanks, Pat, to you and the lads. Orla, you need to make sure that the DNA from this is compared with that of Claire Graham. Any news on the fluid on the floor of the van?”
“Yes, initial analysis confirms that the fluid is human.”
“Good, then we need a comparison between the fluid found on the floor of the van and the body from the river. The minute you know, contact me. Put a rush on things – but I suppose we’re still talking at least twenty-four hours for DNA. If this is Anne Banks, which we suspect it is, then this case is coming together. If Thomas Banks did this, he’s a slippery character. He’s under surveillance at the moment and he’s a very cool customer. I want the evidence so tight he can’t breathe. When I pull him in for questioning I want to have everything we need to nail the bastard.”
Isobel was no longer in any doubt about Simon’s commitment.
“Next,” Simon said, looking at the board. “Ning, where are we with the other body?”
Ning piped up from the midst of a group of men. “The autopsy is being done. Since we didn’t want to alert Thomas Banks by getting a DNA sample, I’ve been on the phones all morning with dentists in the locality of the house. We eventually found Mrs Cooper’s old dentist from ten years ago. We collected the old notes and X-rays and delivered them to the coroner. I had a call from him just before the meeting started and, using the dental records, he confirms that the body from 42 Sycamore Street is Mrs Joan Cooper’s, Matt Cooper’s mother – the man calling himself Thomas Banks’ mother.”
This time there was silence. Isobel was flooded with relief.
Simon said, “So we have one definite death associated with Thomas Banks and if the river body is Anne Banks that’s two.”
Ning spoke again. “The autopsy showed one more thing of note. Joan Cooper’s hyoid bone was fractured. This is more indicative of manual strangulation than strangulation by ligature. The hyoid is not fractured in every case of manual strangulation but more frequently when the person is older. Given the fact that we know of Thomas Banks’ attempted strangulation of his wife and also of an old girlfriend, it seems likely that he strangled and buried his mother,
then sold the house which was in his name.”
“Great work, Ning. Right. We need to find this doppelganger. She may be an accessory to murder. Where are you with that, Frank?”
“We looked at the footage from Manchester train station after the meeting last night. We had Anne Banks leaving the station and walking out onto the street. Manchester police were helping us and they tracked her on CCTV. I sent an officer to be our eyes up there. We had her going into a shopping centre. We lost her in there. However, Manchester police started interviewing shop assistants in the centre and they got something. She went to a hairdresser’s and spent the day having a haircut and a new colour – brunette. We got a picture of this new look. She got a taxi from the centre. The Manchester lads again came through for us and that cab made a drop at the airport. They followed her on airport CCTV and so we have the name that she’s travelling under now – Martina Bell – and she boarded a plane to Germany. At the moment we’re researching that to see if it’s an alias and we, on your say-so, Simon, contacted the German police. They’ll let us know if they locate her and we can take it from there.”
Simon nodded. “Good work. See what you can find out about this woman. Jeff has a sample of her prints and DNA.”
Frank said, “Yes, nothing showed up with those, so she’s not a known criminal.”
Simon nodded. After a brief pause he roused himself from his thoughts. “Now, the man who rented the van – Paul, what’s the story?”
“Charlie Ellis, well, we’ve taken his statement. His prints are on the van steering-wheel and door et cetera. As you know, he’s always admitted that he left the van in the shopping centre. We requested the phone company to give coordinates of his phone to see if we could establish if he went home. In his statement he said he took a Tube home. We looked through CCTV from the Tube stations and it looks like he did, in fact, go home.”
Paul gestured to one of his associates and he wheeled in a large television. Simon moved away and everyone adjusted their seating so that they could see the television screen clearly.
“This is CCTV from the shopping centre,” Paul stated and pressed a button. “This is Charlie Ellis walking from the van into the shopping centre. As you can see, he’s wearing black trousers a loose lumberjack shirt, work boots and a black baseball-type hat. He goes into the centre and leaves, he says, by another exit.”
Paul pressed a button again and more footage followed that seemed to support what he was saying.
“Now,” he said, “here is Thomas Banks in his suit walking into the centre. We’ve requested his mobile-phone records too, but we think he left his phone in his car. Thomas Banks also is in and out of cameras in the centre. However, from footage and also from statements we’ve taken from sales assistants in B&Q, we know that a man who looks like him went into B&Q and bought work boots, a shirt, a Stanley fleece, black trousers, and gloves and a black baseball-type cap. We have a sale, in cash, and we have a witness who is fairly sure it was him. He gets his purchases put in a B&Q bag and we catch Thomas Banks in a suit walking with the bag here.”
There was a brief image of Thomas walking, carrying a bag with a B&Q logo.
“We lose him then and we have a man dressed now like Charlie Ellis walking towards the white van, with the bag. Are you all with me?”
There was a murmur of affirmatives.
“We’re surmising that Thomas Banks bought the clothes in B&Q and changed out of his suit in the toilets. He put the suit in the bag and then, wearing his new work-clothes and with the peak of the hat pulled down over his face, made his way to the van to collect the body and dump it. Physically the men have a similar build and with the hat it’s impossible to do a facial recognition. One of the things that support this switch is – and we have Stella to thank for this – Charlie’s boots are very dirty and this man’s are very clean.” Paul paused and there were murmurs of agreement. “This is our man in the hat later, with his B&Q bag, walking back into the shopping centre. Lastly, here about twenty minutes later, is Thomas Banks walking to his car. He then reaches in for his phone and makes a call, presumably the call to the solicitor. It seems to me that Thomas Banks has set Charlie up as the patsy. Charlie has no alibi at home and he’s the one who rented the van and it looks like him, same build, same clothes. I think Thomas Banks is a very clever man and he knew once he’d disposed of this body, with the doppelganger in the wind, he would be really home and free. If Isobel hadn’t got the photos of the body and if we hadn’t found the body in the river, we would have very little.” He paused. “We still have a way to go to make this case – eh, watertight.” There were groans at the pun. “Obviously Stella’s observation about the state of the boots is suggestive but not legally compelling.”
Simon clicked his fingers. “What about forensic gait analysis?”
There were some puzzled faces and side-talking.
“What’s that?” Paul said.
Simon raised his voice above the melee. “It’s a new area of recognition analysis. Basically, each of us has a unique gait or walk, like a fingerprint. Forensic gait analysts can examine footage of walks and determine who the individual is. We have footage of Thomas Banks walking and of Charlie Ellis walking and then we have footage of the man who dumped the body. Technically, the forensic gait analyst should be able to tell us which man walked to the van and drove off and then returned to the shopping centre. Isobel also captured some footage of him walking away from the van after dumping the body.”
“So an analyst should be able to tell us which of these men dumped the body from his gait?”
Simon grinned. “Exactly.”
“And where would we find such an expert?”
“I have a name. Paul, you need to get on to this guy, provide him with all the footage. Tell him it’s an emergency, a multiple murder case and that we need an answer by tomorrow.”
“How will that evidence stand up in court or with a jury?” Paul asked.
“I’m not sure how widely accepted it is but it might clarify for us what’s happening.”
There were more mutterings. Simon made no move to curtail it.
Patricia leant towards Isobel. “Thomas had no bag leaving the shopping centre.”
Isobel said distractedly, “No.”
Patricia looked at her significantly and said again, “Thomas had no bag leaving the shopping centre.”
Isobel was mystified. “So?”
Simon called out, “Anything else, Paul?”
“Yes. Thomas Banks leaves the centre with no bag.”
Patricia nodded at Isobel.
Paul said, “So that means that probably Thomas carried his suit in the bag and changed back into it in the shopping centre. When he leaves the centre he is carrying no bag.”
Isobel nodded, still a bit behind the curve.
“So he had to dump the bag and clothes somewhere in the centre!” Patricia whispered.
Realisation dawned on Isobel.
“Those work-clothes, which must still be in the centre,” Paul went on, “will have his victim’s DNA if he moved the bodies.”
There was a moment of silence where everyone digested this.
Isobel was looking at Patricia who was nodding energetically.
“Excellent!” Simon said. “Where are you with getting those clothes?”
“Stella has been helping me with this,” Paul said.
Stella joined Paul at the front
She pulled a face. “Unfortunately, by the time we realised all of this, the rubbish had gone to the dump. We have a warrant sorted and what we need now are lots of willing searchers. This is a priority.”
Simon called out, “I realise this is no one’s idea of ideal working conditions but I need all the bodies I can get to do a rubbish sift!”
There were groans.
Isobel reached out and squeezed Patricia’s hand.
“Well done, Patricia, for figuring that out.”
Patricia blushed.
Isobel whispered
to her, “Oh we almost have him! I can feel it.”
“I’ve been on to the centre.” Stella said. “The bins inside are emptied a number of times a day into big bins at the back. All this rubbish is collected at four in the morning and transferred to the dump. Unfortunately, we didn’t realise until after four that we needed the rubbish. I contacted the dump and warned them that we were getting a warrant. They are doing their best to cooperate. The men in charge of the dump are already tracing where the shopping-centre stuff was dumped this morning. I’ve also contacted the company with the dump lorries and they’re tracing where the loads from the centre were dumped from that end.”
Simon breathed a sigh of relief. “Do we know yet how much stuff is taken to the dump daily from the shopping centre?”
“Ten trucks worth of rubbish.”
Simon groaned.
“Some of that is recycling stuff, cardboard and plastics,” Stella added. “They reckon there will be six or seven trucks with general waste.”
Simon added, “He might have placed the different items of clothing in different bins so we’ll have to go through them all meticulously. Still, with enough of us that shouldn’t take too long. We’ll need pictures of the clothes to distribute to all the searchers so they know what we are looking for.”
“I have them.” Stella lifted a hand holding a bunch of pages.
Simon nodded. “Brief everyone while I chat to Isobel, Patricia and Adam. All searchers at the dump asap.” He gestured to Isobel and the others and they followed him to his office.
Simon turned to Adam. “I don’t have much time but how are you getting on with the hit-and-run?”
“It’s hard to say as yet. We intend to follow up with another witness now. We’ll let you know how that goes.”
“The evening meeting won’t happen tonight as we’ll probably still be rubbish-sifting. I’ll text if anything changes, otherwise assume we’ll meet here at midday tomorrow. The DNA should be back by then to make an identification of the body.”
They nodded.
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